dot hack: NASCENT
by dashinburasu
Summary: A kid starts playing the world for the first time, and notices some injustices that must be tended to.
1. Prologue

Chapter 1: PROLOGUE  
  
"When you get home you besta be installing that game!" Chloe boasted.  
"I will get on as soon as I get home to show you the ropes. You better be there!"  
I nodded.  
I had recently gotten the game "The World" but never had any time to install it. " The World" is a Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game (MMORPG). Chloe had recently picked it up for my birthday.  
I was, at the time, still deciding on which character class to play. There was the basic warrior, the Blademaster. There was also your average mage character, the Wavemaster. You also had the choice of others, such as a Polearm, a spear wielder, a Heavy Blade, one who carries a sword as big as ones body, and a Twin Blade, a uniquely speedy character wielding two dagger sized blades or similar weapons.  
Chloe's character was a Polearm, whom she named Trinity. Chloe has been playing the game for a long time. Almost two years she said once. She insisted I try and play this game. I am mostly interested in pen and paper RPG's, but she says this game is "DaBomb!". I had my character choice down to either a Blademastar, or a Wavemaster.  
On the school bus, I talked it over with the person I always sit with, because our bus driver heavily enforced assigned seating. I didn't like him very much because he tended to smell a lot, morning and evening. He says I should choose the Blademaster, because he liked swords. I am not that big a fan of swords; I think they are all too common.  
Before I walked through the door to my house, I decided that I would choose to become a Wavemaster inside the game. I have always loved the mage related classes of characters in the various pen and paper role- playing games that Chloe, her group of friends, and I used to play.  
I went up the stairs to my room, and inserted the " The World" CD into my computer I have up in my room. An anime themed message window, with many pictorial examples of possible characters opened up asking if I wanted to install "The World". I clicked the yes button. The next screen was the End-User License Agreement. I have never fully read one and under stood it, so I just skipped it.  
As the game was Installing, I was notified that I had a new mail message. It was from Chloe, the subject line was "Where Are You!!?? (  
  
Hey, Anthony. Where are ya? I have been waiting almost 15 minutes  
for you. Hurry up and get your character set-up and get to root town,  
PRONTO!  
  
Your Favoritest Friend Chloe ;-)  
  
She is so impatient, I thought to myself.  
When I got done reading my mail, the installation had just finished. I clicked on the newly created icon on my desktop labeled "Enter The World". The icon was a picture of a globe, tinted gold to give it life.  
"Enter your full name," the program asked.  
"Anthony Gerald Loquis" I typed. I clicked the next button.  
The form asked me to fill out numerous amounts of information, including Birth date, obviously to determine the age of the character you will be playing to add realism, and character type. I was still unsure of what character class to choose, but Wavemaster seemed the most interesting.  
  
Now it was time to choose the outfit for my character. I didn't much care for what my character looked like. I chose a simple black set of robes with a hood that almost completely shadowed my face. Under the robe was a simple peasant-like outfit. A dark grey shirt with a triangle cut out of the collar showing a small amount of my chest. As for the pants, they were a simple pair of black breeches.  
When it came time to name my character, I sat for a good three minutes in thought. I was never good at naming anything. I once had a cat that I never found a name for. Therefore, it inherited the traditional name, Kitty.  
I decided to use the first two letters of each part of my name, first, middle and last. This spelled out Angelo.  
"Angelo" I typed into the text box. I clicked OK and waited for a while the computer connected to the server to create my character. It then told me to go to the login screen and enter my character name, and the password I had chosen earlier when I had to fill in all the information to activate my character.  
I did just that and then hit the big white "Login" button. I waited. . . 


	2. The Delta Server and Mac Anu

I waited as the game took me into Root Town. I can't wait to see what the game is like. Will it be hard? Will it be boring? It must be good if Chloe has been playing for over 2 years.  
Finally! The game has signed me in.  
  
"Hey! Where have you been, I have been waiting here for over a half hour!" The first thing I notice when I get into root town is Chloe. "And don't forget that my name is Trinity inside the game."  
"It took a while for me to get into the game, you know with the character creation process and all," I said in my defense.  
"You must be a really slow typer or something, it didn't take me that long to get through it," she boasted. "Anyway, welcome to The World!"  
I looked around. Chloe an. . . I mean Trinity and I were in a really bustling town with lots of other characters from around the world. I heard many different languages being spoken around me. This town was huge and all walled in. The walls were vintage brick, the walkways were vintage brick, everything except the bridge a ways away was vintage brick; and there were rivers everywhere. People were on boats in these rivers. I turned around and noticed a rotating circular outline with a transparent, light green center. This object was slightly taller than me.  
"That is the chaos gate," trinity said. "It is used to go to different game fields. There is so much stuff you can do with it, but that's for later. I wanna show you the shops first"  
She dragged me by the arm and took me some stairs; following a path and then taking a right turn down some steps to what looked like an item shop. This shop was indented in a wall. There was a wooden sign on the counter with what looked like a bottle with a green substance.  
"This is the item shop," Trinity said. "This is the most important shop in the game. You go here with the gold you get from selling your treasures from the dungeons. You can buy all kinds of healing items and stuff like that here."  
I shuddered at the fact that there are dungeons in this game. I never liked going into dungeons on any of the games I played before. I almost always had died in the middle of one, and had to restart the game and try again. That makes me really angry.  
"Make sure you pick up some health drinks!" she reminded.  
I walked up to the counter and the store clerk said, "You won't get far without the right items."  
I asked him for 5 health drinks.  
"100 gold, please"  
I then realized that I might not have any money. I noticed a pouch down at my side and I checked it. Sure enough there was 500 gold in it. I gave the clerk the 100 gold and he gave me the potions. I then asked myself where am I going to put them. I then felt a weight on my back. I noticed I had a very primitive looking sack. I stuffed the 5 potions in my bag, and then Trinity suddenly pulled me away headed towards another wall- indented shop. This wasn't a shop at all.  
"This is the Elf's Haven," she said. "You can store items here that you can't keep with you. You can only carry 50 different items."  
"That's very useful," I said.  
She motioned me to follow, so I did. We crossed a very old looking bridge with banners hanging out above the tunnels below. I could hear the ambient sound of water flowing all around the town as we walked around.  
She took me to another shop and pointed out it was a weapon shop. That was a given considering the wooden sign on the counter depicted two crossed swords.  
"You can buy some weapons here, but they aren't that great. You can get better ones from the dungeons and by trading with people. I'll show you how to do that later when you get some treasures."  
She pulled me up some steps and across a main walkway and down some more steps and we came to another shop. This one was sort of a mystery. The wooden sign on the counter depicted a crystal ball with what looks energy being released from it.  
"This would be the magic shop," she said noting my confusion. "You can buy scrolls for magic abilities you don't have. You just buy them, whip them out when monsters get on your nerves and BAM!! The monsters are gone! You normally get abilities by equipping different weapons and armor. The abilities differ with weapon type. You, for example, would get a lot more magic skills from your weapons than say, a pole arm like me. I would get more spear related skills."  
I realized I hadn't seen a weapon in my hands or my pack or anything. "Where is my weapon?" I asked. "Do I have to buy one?"  
"You will see it once we go into a field. Well, those shops are on all of the servers you will visit as a brand spankin' new player of the world. For now we will only worry about the Delta server. The Delta server's root town is named Mac Anu: The Water City."  
"I see where this is going," I replied. "Each server has a different root town."  
"Exactly!" she exclaimed. "And they all are different themed. I advise you stay on the Delta server, the monsters can get pretty tough in other servers."  
As we walked toward the chaos gate, to go a dungeon exploration, I saw many different people. I stopped to talk to a blade master passing by. He said his name was Orca, of Azure Sea. I dropped my jaw at the elegance of the name. I asked him how long he had been playing and he told me about 5 years, ever since The World had come out with its first beta version.  
We were almost to the chaos gate when Trinity stopped suddenly and looked at me.  
"OH! I almost forgot! We should probably save before we go to the dungeon." We walked back down the brick steps leading to the chaos gate to another indent in the wall with a burly looking man inside. There was one of those convenient little wooden signs with a disk depicted on the side.  
I walked up to the man and he said, "You better save before you go doing anything in the dungeons."  
I asked him to save my game. He did. Trinity did the same.  
We walked back up the stairs to where the chaos gate lie.  
"Ok, I am gonna give you my member address and you are going to add me to your party."  
She gave me the member address and a small notebook with many pages appeared in my hand. The name "Trinity" had appeared in the book.  
"Now you use this notebook to keep your member addresses in. You can send a flash mail to anyone in your member address notes. Flash mail acts like telepathy in the world. You type in the message you want to send to the person, click send, and it gets shipped off to the person. You can read flash mail while still online in the world. The BBS on the other hand you have to log out of to look at. You can look at that on your own time."  
  
I looked at my notebook. I touched Trinity's name transparent hologram of a keyboard appeared in place of the notebook. I wrote.  
Hey! This is kind of weird messaging you while you are standing right  
in front of me. Oh well, thanks so much for showing me around this  
place. I really like it so far, and I think I am gonna keep playing  
this game!  
  
Angelo :)  
  
Chloe apparently got the message. Her characters expression went blank for a few seconds. When she got back, she gave me this weird look that seemed to say, "you're a dork!"  
Trinity told me to walk up to the Chaos gate and say, "delta Bursting Passed Over Aqua Field". I did and suddenly a series of high tech looking rings formed around my character and Mac Anu suddenly disappeared from my sight . . . 


	3. delta Bursting Passed Over Aqua Field: ...

Just as suddenly as Mac Anu vanished from my sight, the new field appeared. It was filled with lush green grass. The sky was clear and I could hear the chirping of birds. Scattered, as far as the eye could see, were dozens of stone structures. They looked as if they had been left behind by a very primitive race or something.  
"Wow!" I exclaimed.  
"What! It is just a field. The novelty wears off, I guarantee it" Trinity bursted out.  
I noticed 4 Yellow portal type things. They moved constantly.  
"Those are magic portals. Monsters come out of them when you approach them" Trinity explained.  
"Ok then, lets go," I said as I started running toward one of the portals. I herd a big whoosh and the portal exploded. When the light faded, which only took a second or two, there was a goblin looking around. The thing had 2 long ears and a face very reminiscent of a rat. It caught a glance at me and started coming after me with its bone club. A staff suddenly appeared in my hand and I immediately blocked his first attack.  
"What do I do?" I screamed at Trinity.  
"Well Captain Obvious, you attack it back," she said as I blocked another attack from the beast.  
I swung my staff at the goblin. It fell backwards, shook his head, and made a leap for me. I tried to dodge him, but he got a swipe at my forearm.  
"I hope I don't have to do this often," Trinity said chasing after the goblin with her spear. With one swift blow of the lance the goblin vanished and a treasure chest was left in its place. "Cast 'Repth' and you will be better before you know it."  
Suddenly I realized I knew how to cast magic. "REPTH" I screamed. Green sparkles surrounded me and my wound closed.  
"You gotta be careful when you engage monsters, especially if you are a newbie. The monsters can get tough if you don't know how to engage them right. Being a wavemaster doesn't help things, they start off with a low defense."  
"Sorry," I apologized. I kind of zoned out for a second realizing I had a second spell. It is called 'Vak Kruz'. It is a fire-based attack that hurts one enemy. I'll have to try that one next time I find a goblin.  
  
I got up, brushed my self off, and headed toward another portal. Again the light flashed and another goblin appeared, looking at me with its vicious black eyes. I charged at with my staff and knocked it down. I backed up and yelled "VAK KRUZ". Fireballs revolved around the goblin for a while and then, in a flash, bombarded the goblin. It disappeared and a treasure chest, strangely different from the last one, appeared. I went to go up and touch it when I herd trinity scream from behind me . . .  
"Don't touch that!" she exclaimed. "That is a rigged treasure chest. You open it and it goes Kablooey! and you get poisoned or something. Not good seeing as how you don't have any antidotes yet. Here, use this to disarm it."  
She threw me an item labeled 'Fortune Wire' and said to use it on the treasure chest. I threw the wire at the treasure chest, and the chest turned the normal oak color of the other one. I walked up to open it and got a health drink. YAY!  
"Might as well get the other one too. I have all the items I need, you need them more." Trinity said.  
I walked over to the other chest and opened it. It was an antidote. I know I will need this. I always end up getting poisoned at the worst possible time.  
I spent another five minutes or so defeating the other goblins in the portals. One of them contained two goblins, so Trinity helped me out with that one. I ended up getting 2 more health drinks and another antidote.  
As Trinity and I were walking toward the dungeon's entrance, which was a little upraised ground with stairs leading into the ground, with four pillars around the edges of the upraised land, she starts telling me what to expect in dungeons.  
"Ok, dungeons consist of several floors of rooms. The number of floors depends on what keywords you choose. Most, if not all the rooms will contain at least one magic portal. Remember this, though, as you go down further in a dungeon, the monsters will get harder, so be careful. I think that about covers the dungeons."  
We walk down the stairs and find a room that is pretty much empty. The walls are all dirt. I am not going to touch them; they look like they could cave in on us at any second. Trinity assures me they wont. There are torches at regular intervals on the wall with an open doorway at the opposite end of the room.  
"Ready?" she asks.  
"Yea, lets go!" I say.  
We rush through the doorway into the next room . . . 


	4. delta Bursting Passed Over Aqua Field: ...

Again, with the same motif as the last room; all dirt walls with fire braziers on the wall at regular intervals, Trinity and I walked into the next room.  
Another one of those monster portals was located at the far end of the large rectangular shaped room. I started running toward it as the monsters began to appear. Before I started fighting the monsters, I notice a strange carving on the wall; it looked as if it could have been a door.  
WHACK! I got hit with a Goblin's club. I retaliated with my staff and hit it in the middle of the head. It winced as it fell backward. I jumped back a few feet and yelled "VAK KRUZ". As before, the fireballs surrounded the goblin and in one instant, came together on the goblin. The goblin fell back, faded, and a treasure chest took its place.  
"Very good," Trinity said, sounding impressed. "I think you are getting the hang of this. Pretty soon you will be as good as me." She said the 'me' with a certain hint of confidence.  
"You really think so?" I asked in amazement. Trini . . .I mean Chloe never compliments people.  
"Yup," she replied encouragingly.  
All of a sudden, I hear a sound, like the cave is going to fall and I look to the other side of the room, where I saw the carving, and it instantly opened, revealing a doorway.  
"What is up with that, Trinity?" I asked.  
"Ok, in almost every room in the dungeon there is at least one magic portal. You must clear all the magic portals in the room before you can move onto the next. It isn't that tricky."  
"I get it," I mumbled to myself. "Well, onto the next room?"  
"I don't see why not," she said, and we walked through the doorway.  
This next room had a set of stairs going deeper into the dungeon on the far side. This room was squarer than the previous one.  
"As you go down deeper into the dungeon, the monsters get harder. I will help you from now on," Trinity said.  
We went down the stairs and came to a room that really didn't have much to say. It was just a pathway to a door. Trinity and I went through the door to come to a rather large, 'plus shaped' room, with doors on each end.  
"Which way do you want to go?" asked Trinity.  
"Umm. . ." I said to myself as I thought about it. "Lets go straight," I said spontaneously. We, Trinity and I, started ran to the doorway on the far side.  
This room was a large square with a magic portal right square in the center. The portal flashed and the monsters were released.  
This time it was a goblin and a triad of floating weapons.  
"You go after the Goblin and I will handle the Dark Blades," Trinity shouted.  
I silently agreed. I started running toward the goblin with my staff ready to strike, but it dodged my strike. I managed to nip it with my staff as I pulled it out of the ground. It jumped, as if to strike me, but all of a sudden I heard "VAK DON" from across the room and a large stone appeared above the goblin and fell directly upon it and killed it. The goblin left no treasure.  
"You ok?" I heard. It was a rather high-pitched male voice. I looked over and noticed it to be a twin blade. "Lucky I came along, or you would have been toast," he said rather egotistically.  
"I'm fine," I replied. "REPTH," I yelled, and I was healed.  
"That was a waste" the high-pitched man. He dashed forward, and struck my throat with one of his blades, and I blacked out.  
  
"WHAT WAS THAT!?" I screamed as I came to, in the real world. I should probably log back on and see if Chloe is ok.  
I turned my focus back to the computer screen and went to log on again. I clicked the login button . . .  
  
I am back in the watery city of Mac Anu. I look around for a while to see if Chloe is nearby, to no prevail. I walk over to the wall and lean against it to ponder.  
What was that that killed me? This always happens to me. I don't think I should play this game any more.  
I reached into my item pouch and noticed that a lot of my stuff was gone. Everything I obtained in the dungeon was like it had never been there.  
Just then, Chloe came through the Chaos Gate and looked around for a while.  
"Over here!" I yelled. She looked my way and ran over to me. "What was that?"  
"That is your everyday PKer," she said, sounding kind of annoyed.  
"PKer?" I said sounding confused.  
"Player killer," she elaborated. "A player killer is someone who has no life within the world, so they go about killing other players, and taking their stuff. It brings them excitement, or so they say"  
"Is there any way of avoiding them?" I asked, hopefully  
"Nope"  
"Isn't there rules against it?"  
"Not really, no one enforces them"  
"That's not right! If they have the guts to put rules upon us, they should also have the guts to enforce them."  
"PKers aren't the easiest people to track down, you know!" Trinity explained. It is getting pretty late, I think I am going to log out for the night."  
"I am going to stay and explore for a while, talk to people, maybe make some new friends." I replied.  
Trinity walked over to the Chaos Gate and logged out.  
I sat there for a while and thought about things. About how player killers can even be legal in The World. If they have rules, shouldn't they be enforced? I know! I will post a topic on the BBS. That is a sure way to get me something.  
  
I walked over to the Chaos Gate and logged out . . .  
  
I clicked the button, from the login screen, that took me to the BBS Message Boards. And started typing  
  
SUBJ: PKers and The World  
  
Hey everyone. I am brand new to The World; in fact I just  
started today. There is something that bugs me though. While I  
was being escorted around a dungeon today, someone saved me, but  
that someone turned around and killed me. I had gotten a lot of  
valuable items, and I lost them all. I never did find out who  
this person was. If there rules against PKing than why aren't  
they enforced? This really ticks me off, and if anyone has any  
information than please let me know.  
  
Thanks  
  
I shut down my computer after clicking post, and turned my light off for a good nights sleep. 


End file.
